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Chicago Developing 'Suspicious Behavior' Monitoring System
narramissic writes "Over the past few years, Chicago's Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC) has been blanketing the city with a network of thousands of video cameras in an effort to remotely keep track of emergencies in real time. Now, with the help of IBM, the network is getting some smarts. IBM software will analyze the video and ultimately 'recognize suspicious behavior,' says OEMC spokesman Kevin Smith. 'The challenge is going to be teaching computers to recognize the suspicious behavior,' said Smith. 'Once this is done this will be a very impressive city in terms of public safety.'"
Obviously, this software will do squat. And obviously they'll be flooded with false positives. Assuming they still try to investigate all of these leads, they would need to increase the size of their work force - i.e. more jobs. Which is good. But does that offset all the taxpayer money going into this ultimately useless program?
Chicagoans should go out of their way to act "suspicious" in front of these cameras if they want to prevent the onset of a nanny state. Wear thick coats during the summer months, keep their hands in their pockets, look back and forth. Hell, maybe sticking their tongues out at the cameras would constitute suspicious ...
Besides, where they ought to be placing these cameras is in the halls of Chicago's city government.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Cool, so, we're not even pretending anymore that the use of cameras are anything less than the complete and total expansion of the panopticon, are we? I mean, of course, you'll still have the people who say "well, if you aren't doing anything wrong, why are you worried", but for the most part, we're pretty up front about the fact that we're going to be using cameras to keep our citizenry under the thumb. Who defines what constitutes "suspicious behavior", local cops, politicians, computer techs? There will be essentially zero guidelines for the implementation of this technology, so what's to stop the local PD, or the DEA from auto-flagging someone who looks like they're raising a pipe to their mouths, or, even better, engaging in nefarious acts like leaving the house late at night? And not just that, but how many citizens will have their rights violated because of a false positive from the "suspicious behavior" flag? Will the flag be enough to get a warrant to search someone's car or home?
End of the fucking universe, right here.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I'd wager the false positve rate is going to be very high, and it will be interesting to see if they can bring that down. Something like an alert for a stolen car ( or a car related to an amber alert ) could generate a very high false positive rate if the car is a common make/model.
On the other hand, if it teaches criminals to act in less "suspicious" ways, then the system will be of no value or perhaps even detremental ( showing no "suspicious" behavior when criminal activity is present, leading to a false sense of security ).
A Human Right
What's next ? Hollerith numbers tattooed on wrists ?
City camera is pointed at a window in which is visible the screen of a computer at a public internet cafe. You log on to /. at the cafe. Bam! Suspicious activity! See, it's applicable. :)
Also, and call me crazy if I'm crazy, but its awfully hard to live as a free, responsible person online if you can't live as a free, responsible person offline . Hence, meat-space rights are relevant to YRO.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
Wasn't there an article on how the massive London camera network doesn't actually do any good? And that one has real people monitoring it. Who really thinks a computer will be able to do a better job at something so nebulous as "suspicious behavior?"
Oh, that's right, nobody. However, that doesn't stop the company pushing this from trying to make a buck. It's sorta like the DRM companies. The DRM companies all know it doesn't work, but companies keep falling for the salesmen's lies.
How many times have I heard this on an AI related project? "Once this is done..." is a fantasy, especially when they already describe it as a "trick" and a "challenge." From TFA:
Challenge, indeed. I'll believe it when I see it.
Scratch that. I'll believe it when the system sees it.
"'Once this is done this will be a very impressive city in terms of public safety.'""
Impressive if your main hope in life is to live in some sort of Orwellian nightmare. Hey, here's a thought. If you put cameras in every house you can cut down on child abuse! You don't object to that do you? What are you some sort of kid toucher? Won't somebody please think of the children!
So much for Chicago being the lovely city I wanted to visit again.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
We can't even make a translator that works and you're going to look for "suspicious" people? Is that some kind of sick joke? What, exactly, constitutes "suspicious" and wouldn't that be almost impossible to code in any meaningful way? Hell, we humans can't even agree on what "suspicion" looks like and now they want to teach a computer. Good luck with that.
I expect that "suspicion" is a fairly complex process in the human brain (it relies on a lot of different senses) so I am having difficulty understanding how anyone in their right mind would undertake such an effort.
... and unless we've made astounding progress in the last 5 years (as in, someone created a strong AI), IBM is full of crap. Completely, utterly full of guano.
Here's how the system will work.
head covered: check
metal flash: check
loud sound: check
Result: sound warning
There's absolutely no way in hell that the system is going to be able to do a real-time analysis that goes beyond basic image and sound recognition that is coupled with a set of expert rules. Why? Because no will have the time to properly train the system. And even if someone would be insane enough to do that, it'll still fail, because context is utterly missing.
Example: someone runs out of a store in a hurry. Someone comes after him. Should the police be involved? Did someone steal something from the store, or did two people find out one of their friends is in trouble? Or are they late to a movie?
This system is doomed to complete failure and is nothing but a boondoggle for IBM. Kudos to the IBM salespeople who sold Chicago on this system. They're able to sell fridges to eskimos, I'm sure.
The only thing that really worries: the politicians who drank the kool-aid. For those of you who live in Chicago: vote them out, or move. This is a sign of serious trouble on the horizon.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
This is just silly. I understand that people would prefer to PREVENT crime instead of REACTING to crime, but you can't PREDICT crime as an alternative. Prevention and prediction are two very different things.
To prevent crime, educate the populace so as help to instill acceptable ethics and a sense of shame. Help them to acquire the resources they actually need and stop telling them they're less of a person if they don't have the "best" of everything. Teach people about people and reinforce those teachings throughout life.
To predict crime, go see a psychic because they are just as likely to choose an imminent criminal due to "suspicious" activity. You'd spend less money this way. You'll need it for the counter-suits.
Truth of the matter is that the nation isn't a fan of raising their children. Nor do they look kindly on higher taxes to reduce classroom size so that teachers can be mentors as well as lectures. And since crime prediction is a fantasy, the best we can do is crime reaction.
Considering Chicago's political history, they'd better not put up any cameras near city hall.
Have gnu, will travel.